Mitochondria Are Alive • Hacker News Board

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#211

Post by liyamchitayat » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 9:47 PM UTC

jessriedel wrote: post #153

This article managed to hit two classic science journalism cliches in just the first few paragraphs. (1) “Someone hypothesizing a very dramatic theory with weak evidence was considered wrong by most colleagues but later vindicated when strong evidence emerged”. (No mention of thousands of other dramatic hypotheses that turned out wrong.) (2) “You may have heard in unsophisticated popularization that [philosophical cl…

Hi! for point 2# I had many debates about this with Prof. that are cell biologists, and if you google "Are mitochondria alive," the answer Gemini will give you is no. This is very controversial in my academic circles, but I appreciate your thoughts!

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#212

Post by tim333 » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 9:49 PM UTC

dragandj wrote: post #200

liyamchitayat wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! I agree with you, which is why I wrote this- but if you google "are mitochondria alive" gemini says it isn't. And yes, the cells in your heart have an effective and potenitial niche! We seem to have many tools to engineer viruses, but few to engineer mitochondria- perhaps considering them as alive could change that!

"Gemini" says? So what?

It shows there are misconceptions out there, if only in LLMs.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#213

Post by dekhn » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 9:55 PM UTC

hshshshshsh wrote: post #169

dekhn wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no known scientific principle or theory with experimental support that without a conscious observer reality cannot exist. It's not something that can be tested, and lies in the realm of philosophy, not science.

I don't think reality has this property that what cannot be tested through scientific method is not true.

It might not, you wouldn't be able to convince anybody that something is true, but cannot be tested- that's philosophy and religion.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#214

Post by _yb2s » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 9:57 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #188

liyamchitayat wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! I agree with you, which is why I wrote this- but if you google "are mitochondria alive" gemini says it isn't. And yes, the cells in your heart have an effective and potenitial niche! We seem to have many tools to engineer viruses, but few to engineer mitochondria- perhaps considering them as alive could change that!

I just tried that and it said: >Yes, mitochondria are alive, though they are not considered "living" in the same way as a cell because they can't function independently... Maybe it's learning!

Eukaryotes generally can’t survive without mitochondria either. It seems silly to discuss if different subsystems in a living organism are independently “alive.” It’s a bit like arguing if just the wings or just the engine of an airplane are flying machines.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#215

Post by berbec » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 9:58 PM UTC

kranke155 wrote: post #2

I wonder what mitochondria dream about. Do they have elections? Politics? Their own understanding of the universe, that somehow ends on the skin surface?

> I wonder what mitochondria dream about.

ATP sheep.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#216

Post by meneton » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 9:58 PM UTC

liyamchitayat wrote: post #185

meneton wrote: post #179

This article is framed as if there is something novel and profound here, but the "aliveness" of mitochondria is simply a matter of how we choose to apply the label "life" - a human linguistic construct that exists independently of the biological phenomena. This is not a new discussion - science has been considering this question for many decades, just as it has with viruses. These all come down to arguments about sem…

Hi! I agree with you, which is why I wrote this- but if you google "are mitochondria alive" gemini says it isn't. And yes, the cells in your heart have an effective and potenitial niche! We seem to have many tools to engineer viruses, but few to engineer mitochondria- perhaps considering them as alive could change that!

You are completely right that we should be thinking far more creatively about manipulating mitochondria. There are a lot of diseases (including Covid) that have mitochondrial aspects. I just don't think calling them alive helps, other than to get you some decent exposure on HN :)

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#217

Post by dekhn » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 9:58 PM UTC

hshshshshsh wrote: post #168

9dev wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that kind of mixing up the chain of causation? Without a winner, a lottery cannot exist (or at least, at p=0, it's nonsensical). That doesn't automatically imply there are a lot of winners, however.

I think what I am trying to say is consciousness (life) is reality. And so all kind of planetary experiences can exist inside consciousness as it's contents since consciousness is capable of generating all kind of content. There is nothing specific about our consciousness that makes it unique to earth.

Your philosophy is consistent with panpsychism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism). Not really clear how this affects the major discussion here, which is about objective reality as determined by science, and so far as we can tell, neither life nor consciousness is not a prerequisite for reality. It's a fun idea to play with but firmly outside the realm of something we could experiment with scientifically.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#218

Post by jjk166 » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 9:58 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #173

tasty_freeze wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to what others have pointed out (chloroplasts), I think this makes another mistake. Although only the mitochondria and chloroplast lineages remain, it is possible it happened other times but those lineages were out-competed, for whatever reasons, and are now extinct.

> it is possible it happened other times but those lineages were out-competed, for whatever reasons, and are now extinct Chlorophyll probably outcompeted retinal [1]. (The stuff in our eyes.) The reduced form of my claim is that mitochondrial life so freakishly outcompetes its competitors as to be in a class of its own. Which still yields a rare Earth, albeit a first among many. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purp…

In an evolutionary process, one lineage running away is the most likely outcome. It's very unlikely that two competing lineages would evolve to be exactly equal at the same time and remain equal for an extended period of time.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#219

Post by WalterSear » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 9:59 PM UTC

outworlder wrote: post #86

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #78

Mitochondria are why I’m a Rare Earther. In Earth’s history, mitochondrial endosymbiosis occurred once. Without that you don’t have the energy budget for complex life. Moreover, there may be a narrow window where it can happen: modern microbiology has defences and selection pressures that it make inhospitable to the hobbling chimeræ the first mitochondrial cells would have been. Until mitochondria, the emergence of l…

Mitochondria seems to have been an 'accident', yes. That does not mean that other lifeforms in different planets require mitochondria or equivalent organelles. As long as they can perform the necessary chemical reactions (which could be different in a different environments) and extract enough energy, they should be good. How did mitochondria evolve in the first place? Could they have remained as independent organism…

> Could they have remained as independent organisms and use their massive energy budget to evolve independently?

This presumes that their energy budget was massive to begin with, rather than being selected for over time.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#220

Post by aeturnum » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 10:00 PM UTC

meneton wrote: post #179

This article is framed as if there is something novel and profound here, but the "aliveness" of mitochondria is simply a matter of how we choose to apply the label "life" - a human linguistic construct that exists independently of the biological phenomena. This is not a new discussion - science has been considering this question for many decades, just as it has with viruses. These all come down to arguments about sem…

> The implication of the whole article is that there something we have missed.

I think this article is talking to people who haven't internalized the details of the scientific consensus. Those people are still going around, talking about "life" and making decisions based on the flawed understanding this article is critiquing. I think it's likely that the thing that "has been missed" is not narrowly scientific in the way you seem to be thinking - but more about broad implications and worldview.